The Harlem Renaissance was a flourishing of African American arts and letters with the political goal of bettering the position of Black people in Jim Crow America. While the Harlem Renaissance affected the development of American modernism at large, the movement was international at its core, with strong ties to Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. Perhaps surprisingly, many Harlem Renaissance authors also had connections to the Nordic countries – a region of the world that is seldom associated with US modernisms, let alone with African American culture. In this talk, I will examine the Harlem Renaissance’s Nordic ties by focusing on Nella Larsen and her intertextual connections to Henrik Ibsen. Larsen was the first African American woman to receive a Guggenheim fellowship in creative writing and has become one of the most researched Harlem Renaissance authors in the twenty-first century. I will trace some of Larsen’s underexplored Nordic intertextualities and make a case for reading Larsen transnationally in conversation with her Nordic influences.
Iida Pöllänen is a Research Council of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher at Tampere University and holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. Her research interests include minority literatures in the U.S. and the Nordic countries, modernism, feminist and intersectional theory, and cultural histories of race and racism. Her ongoing postdoctoral project, The Black Renaissance and Its Nordic Affiliations, traces the intertextual connections between the Harlem Renaissance and Nordic literatures as well as studies how discussions of racism, antiracism, and equity traveled through literature across the Atlantic in the early twentieth century.
Please note that this event will be held online. If you want to attend, please register at this link no later than 21 May at 23:59. A Zoom link will be sent on the day of the seminar.